D. A. Rees

SOURCE: "Theories of the Soul in the Early Aristotle," in Aristotle and Plato in the Mid-Fourth Century, edtied by L. During and G. E. L. Owen, Goteborg, 1960, pp. 191-200.

In the following essay' Rees studies the relationship between Aristotle's conception of the soul and Plato's views on moral psychology. Rees stresses that the three works by Aristotle which discuss the nature of the soul (Eudemus, Protrepticus, and De Philosophia) should not be analyzed as exhibiting the development of Aristotle's views on the soul, since they focus on distinct aspects of the soul.

In this paper I shall be concerned with three, and three only, of Aristotle's earlier works, all of them literary productions, the Eudemus, Protrepticus and De Philosophia.

Aristotle's Eudemus, it is known, cannot have been composed before 354 B. C., but it was probably composed either in that year or soon after...